Wynn Resorts has admitted to Nevada regulators that at least seven former executives knew of allegations of sexual harassment against founder and former Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn over the course of more than 10 years and repeatedly failed to do anything about them.
A 10-count complaint filed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board after a year-long investigation found that allegations of Wynn’s alleged predatory behavior toward employees, and rumors of sexual liaisons between another executive and cocktail servers, were known to top management but never led to timely investigations and other steps required by company policy.
These included a confidential, $7.5 million settlement Wynn signed to resolve a rape allegation from 2005, a $975,000 private settlement he agreed to in 2006 to resolve allegations he pressured a cocktail server into a sexual relationship and allegations that he regularly harassed and pressured massage workers into performing sexual favors.
The allegations first came to light in January 2018 in an explosive Wall Street Journal report containing testimony from several women formerly employed at the salon and spa at Wynn Las Vegas on the Las Vegas Strip.
Wynn denied the accusations but resigned within days of the report’s appearance and later severed his ties with the company by selling all his stock. He also was forced to step down as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, a job he won at the behest of Donald Trump, reputedly a close confidante whose career trajectory appears to have escaped any tarnish from his own admissions of sexual misconduct.
At Wynn Resorts his exit was quickly followed by a shakeup of upper management and a near complete purge of the board of directors as the company sought to save the license it had been awarded in Massachusetts to build a $2.5 billion megaresort outside Boston that is scheduled to open in June.
Regulators in Massachusetts opened a separate investigation following the allegations last year, but that process has been slowed by a lawsuit Steve Wynn filed in November alleging that information received by the state Gaming Commission’s lead investigator came from privileged attorney-client communications.
In conducting its investigation, the Gaming Control Board agents interviewed accusers, witnesses, current and former employees, management and other officers of Wynn Resorts, according to the complaint. They also reviewed personnel records, court records, claims filed by employees with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity commission and the Nevada Equal Rights Commission, settlement agreements entered into between Wynn and employees or former employees, administrative records and more.
What they found were several “breakdowns” in “internal controls” fostered by “the ability of former Wynn executives to operate outside of company policies and procedures”.
The company did not deny this in its stipulation accompanying the settlement, acknowledging that it was more preoccupied with Steve Wynn than it was about creating a safe and healthy workplace.
“Respondents have realized, through the board’s investigation as well as its own, that respondents fell short of their culture and commitment in perhaps one of the most important areas for an employer—focusing on its employees. Respondents have focused on a single man, rather than the company’s greatest asset, its 25,000 employees.”
The company contested only a few paragraphs in the 22-page complaint, including one stating that former Wynn Las Vegas President Maurice Wooden knew of the allegations. Wooden stepped down earlier this month.
Beyond that, the company stated that any employee who in the regulator’s determination was aware of sexual harassment allegations and did not investigate or report them “is no longer with the company,” which appears to let current CEO and Steve Wynn protégé Matt Maddox off the hook, easing concerns he might be forced out, gaming analysts said.
The settlement order also lists a number of positive changes the company has implemented over the last year, including the installation of three women as directors and the appointment of women to the positions of company president, general counsel and senior vice president of human resources.
At the workplace level, the company said it has stepped up training on sexual harassment prevention with the aid of an outside consultant and has commissioned studies to explore pay and promotion equality between women and men. A policy providing six weeks of paid leave for new parents has been instituted, along with a scholarship program for employees and their dependents.
The company has “undergone an extensive self-examination over the last 12 months,” its stipulation says, “intended to reinvigorate and implement meaningful change across all levels of the organization, to cultivate a safe, healthy, and supportive workplace culture, and to build on their core values of respecting their employees, corporate responsibility and citizenship, and services to the community. And respondents represent that they have been successful in that regard.”
The settlement order was signed by Control Board Chair Becky Harris—the first woman to ever head the board—on her final weekday in office and now goes to the Nevada Gaming Commission for final adjudication. The board said it is not seeking to revoke or limit the company’s license, but the commission could decide to impose a fine at its next meeting on February 28.
Nor does the order prevent the board or the commission from pursuing cases against people or entities not included in the settlement or currently part of Wynn Resorts. This could include Steve Wynn, whose name is still on several licenses since the Control Board put a hold on them last year to prevent the possibility that he might surrender them, which would place him outside regulatory jurisdiction. And the rumor that Steve Wynn is shopping for Las Vegas real estate for a possible new venture is also in play.
“There’s another component here which involves the gentleman in question,” commission Chairman Tony Alamo told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “In the articles I’m reading, people think this is it, we’re done. Somehow, that’s been missed.”
